Y’see, I’d love to see private Outland/Allod style floating islands as housing locations in WoW. Wizard 101 does almost exactly this already, and for their trouble, they earned some money from me when I bought my Marleybone steampunk island home. (That I currently can’t find any screenshots for, sadly.) I’d love to have a little floating island home out off the coast of Nagrand, or maybe a Dalaran satellite. Maybe I could have a little research hut out by Area 52 and a winter home tucked in the Grizzly Hills. Of course, these would all be phased, so they wouldn’t be a blight on the world, but that’s OK, I don’t necessarily want visitors anyway.

…it all reminds me a little of the system of outposts I tend to make in Minecraft, actually. That’s a delightful game that I’ve spend a great deal of time in. When I’m out exploring a Minecraft world, I build little waystations in interesting locations, and I link them with shortcuts via the Nether, since moving one “grid square” in the Nether is equivalent of 8 spaces in the normal world. I have developed a good sense of how far to go before the Nether portals don’t just tether to existing portals, so I can leapfrog a series of Nether portals and overworld exploration to cover a lot of ground. I wind up with the Arctic home, the Swamp home, Anvilania, the cliffside village, the Burrows, the tree farm, the diamond mine and so on… a whole system of locations that fit into the larger world, but that are uniquely mine. (Get it? Minecraft? OK, my humor needs work.)

If I could have a set of private islands or shacks in the World of Warcraft, especially if they were linked via a portal system… I’d spend more time in the place. It’s even another monetization vector. Yes, it would cost something to develop, but I think it would be worth it. I’d prefer the game to go subscriptionless, of course, and note that I’d spend money on said housing… y’know, while I’m dreaming.

And yes, I know WURM Online kind of scratches this itch, as does Minecraft. I know LOTRO has housing, as does Wizard 101 and Puzzle Pirates. I’m not hopeful that Blizzard will do this, and I’m not really looking for them to take over the world. I just think this is an obvious design area that WoW could go in, and I’d have fun with it. Just ruminating a bit on a Tuesday morning.

Ah, and many thanks to DÀCHÉNG for taking the idea and running with it over thisaway. There really is a lot of fertile design space to mine in this housing concept. Blizzard is missing a trick here, I think. Maybe they don’t need to leverage the Minecraft/DeviantArt “artist” impulse to be successful, but I’m pretty sure the cost/benefit ratio is firmly tilted in the benefit direction. Letting players modify their experience a bit and share their creativity is at least partially the heart of the whole “transmogrification” scheme, and that’s been a success.

I suppose I should have made it clearer, but yes, I am assuming that players would be able to invite friends to see their homes/islands/fortresses. They wouldn’t just be private instances, forever sealed away. They might be instances, but they would be places that other players could access in some way.

…as far as I’m concerned, that builds community while granting players ownership and letting them invest emotionally. That sounds like a game design WIN to me.

Like this:

Related

8 Responses

I always felt that Blizzard’s official ‘reason’ against player housing (“player housing takes people out of the world, potentially creating ghost towns”) was a bit of a hedge tactic in order not to face the big design challenge that lies in meaningful housing systems. instanced housing is just not nearly as good as open-world housing in terms of creating social opportunities in MMOs. single instances are the worst, no matter how shiny – as soon as you’ve gone crazy on the decoration, there’s not much left to do.
LOTRO is the only instanced solution I’ve seen so far that offers a compromise; neighbourhoods have a ton of potential, but unfortunately Bioware didn’t make the most out of them, either. I’m actually currently working on a smaller post concerning the housing updates I’d like to see in LOTRO.

Blizzard have always avoided this can of worms. they haven’t figured out how to effectively integrate housing in WoW and make it a meaningful part of Azeroth (and open world housing was probably never an option thus far). Even Blizzard won’t burn extra resources on a feature that may not pay off longterm. but who knows – Wildstar might actually set a very interesting precedent.

This makes me wonder about TESO…I sure hope they will feature a housing system at launch. I find it somewhat unforgivable how Arenanet have ignored this in GW2 until now (although the home instance was one of their announced features at first).

I think the Sunsong Ranch shows that Blizzard will never have open-world housing, and if they ever do it, it will be instanced. All the same, there is a way this could be integrated into the real world: portals.

Imagine you could open a portal to your instanced home, and everyone else in your party could enter the portal and visit your home. Wouldn’t that be cool?

How about this: you can make portal stones for your home and give them to people, so they can visit even when they aren’t in your party. They could even use them when you aren’t online.

Syl, I am indeed most curious to see what Wildstar winds up doing. I think SWTOR, Allods and Puzzle Pirates have a natural outlet by letting players have ships. Those are understandably mobile and “instanced”, and letting them be decorated and take on passengers is thematic and interesting. That’s part of why I was thinking “islands” since those are understandably remote and private. Housing does tend to bring some baggage with it, especially the sense of place.

Hello there, avatarsofsteel! Good to hear from you again. :) It seems to me that there’s potential for all sorts of travelogue/”houses of Azeroth” sort of blogging fun. My daughter always picks a “house” before she finishes playing and logs her character out there. It seems that wanting a place to roost is very natural.

Yes, I’m still one of your readers though quiet one. My blog is still there too. And I agree about the urge to roost. I do like in EQ2 how you can go out and raise hell then go home and move the furniture and put what you made or found “out there” in your home, it’s a nice combination. I like my Wurmhouses too that you have to build by first cutting trees and mining ore for planks and nails. I love housing in games, I think it belongs there